David S. Evans, Robert Litan and Richard Schmalensee

DAVID S. EVANS has been a business advisor to many payment companies around the world. He is the author of Paying with Plastic: The Digital Revolution in Buying and Borrowing which is the definitive source on the payments industry.  His more recent work is “Innovation and Payments” which describes the how the combination of data-driven marketing, cloud-based computing, and mobile telephony will transform the payments industry.

David is an economist, business advisor and a recognized global authority on the design and implementation of complex business strategies and business models. He has more than 25 years of experience helping companies worldwide design business strategies in multi-sided markets to overcome the “chicken and egg” problem of getting multiple customer groups on board the same platform at the same time. He is the author ofCatalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World’s Most Dynamic Companies and Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries, which won the award for best business book of 2006 from the Association of American Publishers as well as more than 100 articles.

David is the founder of Market Platform Dynamics, a boutique consulting firm that helps businesses leverage economics and quantitative methods for growth and profit. David teaches part time at the University of Chicago where he is a Lecturer and at the University College London where he is a Visiting Professor and Executive Director of The Jevons Institute for Competition Law and Economics. He has a Ph.D. and undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He also serves on the boards of several high-technology companies and is a longtime advisor to some of the largest platform-based companies in the world.

ROBERT E. LITAN is the Vice President for Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation and a Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Litan has authored or co-authored 22 books, edited another 15, and authored or co-authored over 200 articles in journals, magazines and newspapers. Since the onset of the financial crisis, he has authored or co-authored essays on financial reforms for the Brookings website. He has served in several capacities in the federal government: As Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division, Department of Justice; and Staff Economist, Council of Economic Advisers. Dr. Litan received his B.S. in Economics (summa cum laude) from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania; his J.D. from Yale Law School; and his M. Phil. and Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.

RICHARD SCHMALENSEE is the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Economics and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He served as the John C Head III Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1998 through 2007 and as Deputy Dean of MIT Sloan from 1996 through 1998. He was as a Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 through 1991. His research focuses on industrial organization and its applications. He is the author or co-author of 11 books. Professor Schmalensee is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the International Academy of Management. He has served on the National Commission on Energy Policy and the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association.